


Bad Blood

by danisnopeonfire



Category: Phandom, Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), dan and phil
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drunken Confessions, Drunkenness, Fluff and Angst, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 05:12:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4250655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danisnopeonfire/pseuds/danisnopeonfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a state of intoxication, Dan forgets that he and Phil have been broken up for the past year and accidentally brings back suppressed emotions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Blood

The hallway light is too bright and the floor is too squeaky as Phil stumbles through the door. The heavy arm slung over his shoulder and the head resting beside his neck isn’t helping with the action of trying to get the door shut, but there’s nothing he can do about it now.

“ _Fuck_.” Phil lets out a frustrated groan as he tries to push the door closed whilst supporting his intoxicated friend. “Dan, can’t you support yourself a little bit?” 

It’s a stupid question to ask, really. Phil’s mind had rendered Dan immobile the moment his eyes fell onto the ‘ALL YOU CAN DRINK’ poster at the restaurant they’d just got back from. They’re not usually the type to give into temptations easily, to say the least. They’ve experienced first-hand what it’s like to ‘slum it’ and pretty much epitomised frugality when they lived in Manchester, so they know how to reject a good time when they need to. But they say it’s easy to let go of your inhibitions when you’re with the right people, and apparently, Dan’s company was optimum tonight. 

“Remind me,” Phil says breathlessly. He grabs on to Dan’s hip with his left arm when he notices that he’s wavering slightly. “Remind me to never let you be in control of a debit card again.”

Dan’s eyes squint open and he slurs out a groan. In a fruitless attempt to stand up by himself, he accidentally stumbles into the door and closes it with a slam. Phil lets out a chuckle of disbelief and shakes his head.

“Well, at least there’s that,” he mumbles to himself.

“Phil?” Dan peers up at him through bloodshot eyes. They keep going in and out of focus the longer he tries to keep them open.

“Yeah.” Phil lets out a sigh and pulls Dan towards him again. “Yeah, it’s me. I’m here. Let’s just get you to bed.”

Phil’s gaze holds a mixture of challenge and fear as he stares down the steep, narrow staircase ahead of them. He always knew there would be a downside to living in an apartment with so many floors, but never did he think he would have to be introduced to it in such a brutal way.

It takes a lot of pulling and heaving and gentle coaxing, but Phil eventually manages to get them upstairs in one piece. Well, Dan’s left shoe got lost on the way up somewhere, but the victory is still there. If Phil’s limbs weren’t so occupied by an armful of Dan, he maybe would have done a little dance to celebrate his success, but Dan is about three seconds and one false move away from tumbling back down the stairs, so Phil suppresses the urge. 

“Phil, I—” Dan wrenches his body away from Phil’s and lets out a giggle. “I can walk by  _myself_.”

“Oh, you can?” Phil’s tone is unimpressed as he watches Dan clutch at the wall with flailing hands. His face bears an expression of untainted determination as he staggers along the hallway until he’s finally leaning against Phil’s bedroom door. 

“See?” Dan sends him a smirk that alludes to  _I told you so._

Phil shakes his head. “Close, but wrong bedroom.”

Dan doesn’t hear him, though. He pulls the door-handle down and pushes his shoulder against the hard wood until his staggering has been moved from the hallway and into Phil’s bedroom. It’s at this moment precisely when Phil feels the last bit of hope of him getting an early night shatter, and he casts a silent apology to his sleeping-pattern. There’s no chance of him getting that back to normal anytime soon.

When he finally garners the energy required to follow after Dan and attempt to get him back to his own room, he’s met with a sight that makes him stop in his tracks. 

“I can’t get—” Dan’s voice is muffled by the shirt that he’s trying to pull over his head. Phil can’t see his face, but he guesses it would be the epitome of determination. “I can’t get this  _stupid_  shirt off.”

 _What are you doing_? That’s the question Phil’s mind knows he needs to ask right now. He just needs to spit it out so that he can guide Dan back to his own room and rebuild the wall between them. Dan will be fine tomorrow when Phil has drugged him up with paracetamol and coffee, and then Phil can work on forgetting the instinctive emotions of protection he feels when Dan’s as vulnerable as he is now. It doesn’t need to be as complicated as Phil’s heart is quickly making it out to be.

But when Dan lets out a particularly loud groan of frustration under the winning force of his shirt, Phil’s heart translates the sound as a cry for help, and he’s stood in front of Dan in an instant.

“Let me help,” he mumbles. His voice is calm but he feels the opposite as he takes the hem of Dan’s shirt between his trembling fingers and begins to pull upwards. It’s a struggle because Dan is wriggling so much, but he eventually manages to set him free of the offending garment and tosses it onto the floor.

Dan stares at him with a crooked smile.

“Hi,” he says, bringing a hand up to cup Phil’s face. He looks pensive for a moment, and Phil’s beginning to wonder if he’s not as drunk as he’s making out to be, but then his forehead wrinkles up in confusion. “Why…why is your face all blurry?”

Phil laughs off his discomfort and gently moves Dan’s hand away. “God. You really  _are_  drunk, aren’t you?”

He takes a tactful step away from their close proximity and eyes Dan cautiously.

“ _Fuck_.” Dan looks lost as he moves his arms to snake around his own torso. “I’m so  _cold_.”

“Yeah, I bet you are,” Phil mumbles. He thinks back regretfully to how their taxi driver had kicked them out the car after a mere five minutes of getting in. Dan was so loud that the poor guy had had no choice but to tell them to walk the rest of the way home. “And I bet you’re tired, too, huh?”

“Yeah.” Dan punctuates his answer with a yawn and climbs into Phil’s bed, wrapping himself in the sheets. “Come cuddle with me?”

If there was a small fraction of Phil’s mind that was slightly intoxicated, it sure as hell isn’t anymore. He blinks back at Dan as he tries to stop his mouth from opening and closing in incredulity.

“Why would you ask me to do that?” Phil whispers, dumbfounded. His words sound cruel, even to himself, but the filter on his mouth hasn’t been equipped for these kinds of situations. Dan is drunk. He can’t have logical conversations when he’s drunk. If his sober self could watch this situation unfold, he would be screaming and cursing at his drunken self, begging him to shut up and go to sleep. Phil needs to remember that before he gets too invested in a conversation that isn’t even real.

“I’m going to turn out the light and leave you to sleep.” Phil shakes his head, not waiting for an answer. He’s sure he wouldn’t have got one anyway, judging by the way Dan is just staring up at him like he’s a blind man who has been given sight for the first time. “Try to get some sleep.”

“ _No_ , Phil.” Dan sits up quickly. “No, you always stay right with me when I go to sleep. You—” He pauses and Phil guesses he’s trying to make sense of his own words before he vocalises them. “You never just leave me like this.”

The melancholy and irony in his words yanks on Phil’s heartstrings. It’s all he can do to try to ignore the sudden bout of pain and remain neutral. But the way Dan is staring at him, so beseechingly desperate and lost, makes the act a lot more difficult to follow.

“Dan.” Phil lets out a sigh and moves to sit on the side of the bed, his posture tentative. “You’re confused, and you’re getting yourself all worked up. You’ll feel so much better tomorrow when you’ve slept.”  _And when you’ve hopefully forgotten every single detail about this conversation_ , Phil’s mind adds, but he purses his lips to stop the words from flowing.

“I can’t sleep without you.” Dan’s voice cracks on the last word as he sits up more. Phil places a hesitant hand on his shoulder in an attempt to make him lie down again, but Dan takes advantage of the sudden closeness and wraps his arms around Phil’s shoulders. 

“Yes, you can,” Phil says, attempting to pull away. Dan just holds him tighter and breathes noisily into his neck. “You can.”

The repetition of the words doesn’t have the desired effect because Dan just pulls him closer still.

“What do I have to do…” Dan whispers, his breath coming out as a hot slur against Phil’s neck. “…to make you stay?” He uses his index finger to trail an imperceptible line along Phil’s chest, dragging it farther down his body. “Hmm?”

“You’re not doing this.” Phil pushes hard against Dan’s chest.

“Doing  _what_?” Dan struggles to hold Phil tighter but eventually loosens his grip. 

“Doing  _this_. Doing something that I know you’ll regret in the morning.  _Jesus_ , Dan…I—” Phil shakes his head as he finally pulls away and holds him at arm’s length. He searches between both of Dan’s eyes and sees nothing but a drunken mist of confusion.  _He’s drunk, remember_ , Phil’s mind whispers.  _He’s drunk and this is not his fault and you should take nothing he says seriously._

Phil shakes his head again. “I’m going to sleep in your room tonight, okay? Get some rest.”

This time he doesn’t even give his mind a chance to wait for a reply. He just stands up and walks briskly out of the door, praying to everything holy that Dan doesn’t follow him. And when he closes the door behind him and starts to hear faint snores from the other side, he lets out a slow breath. 

“Oh,  _fuck_.” 

 -

-

The sofa is proving to be fateful to Phil’s spine as he stares up at the ceiling.

It had only taken one step into Dan’s room last night for Phil to realise that there was no way he was sleeping there—at least, not without breaking down completely. All of Dan’s clothes and items that were thrown around his room had been too much to bear, so he had taken refuge on the sofa instead.

Phil is realising now that probably wasn’t the wisest decision he’s ever made. His spine feels like it’s on the precipice of absolute destruction. His neck feels like it’s being surgically detached from his shoulders. His legs feel like they’re being bent backwards at unhealthy angles. And his mood…well, that’s the byproduct of all three pains. _Definitely_  a bad decision.

Feeling sorry for himself and in definite need of a caffeine fix, Phil stretches out his legs in an attempt to swing them off the sofa. Bad decision, again. They crack in at least three places and he groans, ignoring the way he’s limping slightly as he starts to head out of the living room. But he only gets so far before he collides with another body walking towards him.

When Phil lifts his head up, Dan is staring at him like a deer that’s being brutally blinded by headlights.

And this is when the panic finally starts to set in for Phil. When he woke up this morning, he hadn’t even thought about how he was going to confront Dan. He didn’t think it would need to be a concern for a good few hours. He just assumed that Dan would stay asleep way into the afternoon, leaving Phil with some valuable time to plan how he was going to act around him. Time to get his  _own_  head around things before he even thought about translating it to Dan. But now they’re here, standing face-to-face with a living room and a hallway trapping them together. Phil’s never been good at thinking on his feet, but he reckons now is a good time to start learning.

"I woke up in your bed.” Dan’s the first one to break the silence.

Phil blinks slowly. “Yeah, you did.”

“You weren’t there, though.”

“No, I wasn’t there.” Phil watches as relief passes over Dan’s expression.

“So I guess that means we didn’t…” Dan trails off as a blush clouds his cheeks.

“ _No_. We didn’t,” Phil confirms. He fixes Dan with a firm gaze, searching between his two eyes. His expression softens automatically when he senses the confusion and almost  _fear_  in Dan’s stare. He’s not quite sure why he says what he says next, but it seems to alleviate a bit of the weight on his shoulders. “You tried to, though…I mean, like, you  _wanted_  to.”

Dan’s gaze drops to the floor and he breathes out through his nose. He doesn’t look at Phil as he pushes past him and practically collapses into the same sofa that Phil had woken up on. Phil follows him and stands next to the coffee table in front of the sofa.

“Should I say sorry?” Dan’s tone is incredulous.

Phil shrugs and bites his lip. “You were pretty drunk.”

“Right.” Dan crosses his legs on the sofa and grabs a cushion to cuddle it to his stomach. “Because being  _wasted_ is the excuse for everything. I should have remembered.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“That it didn’t happen?” Dan meets his gaze sharply. “That you’re making this whole thing up?”

Phil furrows his brow. “I don’t think—”

“Oh  _God_.” Dan buries his head in the cushion and breathes heavily into it. “You hate me, don’t you?”

Phil swallows his natural instinct to reply with  _no, I don’t hate you_ ,because that’s not going to get them anywhere. Maybe humouring Dan is enough to sweep things under the rug for now, but there’s only so much space left before everything spills out.

Phil moves to sit on the sofa next to Dan so that their shoulders are touching. He remains silent as he stares at the blank TV screen and listens to Dan’s quiet sniffling.

“You broke my heart,” he whispers finally. He continues to gaze into the TV screen and watch Dan’s reflection through it as he lifts his head to look at Phil.

Dan looks back down at the cushion after a few moments. “I know.”

“Do you, though?” Phil asks, turning to seek Dan’s eyes. “Because we’ve never spoken about it, Dan. I’ve never explained to you just how difficult it is to live with you each day, pretending like everything’s fine. You know, maybe you’re good at that stuff. All the pretending and the improvising you do. But I’m just  _not_. It’s so…it’s so fucking _hard_ , Dan.”

“I know,” Dan says again. There are silent tears cascading down his face now but Phil resists the urge to wipe them away. “I know.”

“And, like…” Phil blinks furiously as he feels his own tears threatening to escape. “Sometimes I just wish I knew what you were thinking. Because it’s like something changed in you so suddenly, and I was just forced to accept it.”

Phil isn’t surprised when he manages to silence Dan this time, but he  _is_  surprised when Dan reaches out his hand to lie it on top of Phil’s, keeping it still. Phil looks up at him and then back down at their hands, before turning his hand over in Dan’s and linking their fingers together tightly.

The feeling is strange. It’s not completely foreign but it’s not familiar, either. It’s kind of like when you get back on a bike after not riding one for years, and you automatically know how to ride it without crashing. It just comes _naturally_.

“I’m still in love with you,” Dan whispers suddenly, resting his head on Phil’s shoulder. “Are you still in—”

“Don’t.” Phil shakes his head to cut him off. “Don’t ask me if I’m still in love with you, Dan. You know the answer to that already.”

“Then  _say_  it.” Dan shifts so that his body is facing Phil’s, and when Phil turns to look at him, there’s an almost _challenging_  smile tugging at the corner of Dan’s mouth. “I want to hear it, Phil.”

Phil stares at him for a few moments, daring his mind to tell him that this is all just one big dream that he’s going to wake up from soon. But when Dan starts to lean towards him at an agonisingly slow pace, Phil can see all of the fear and blind love in his eyes that he’s sure even his wildest dreams wouldn’t be able to conjure up.

“I… _fuck_ —” Phil moves a hand to Dan’s neck and brings their faces together until they’re inches apart. “I  _do_  love you, I—” He closes his eyes and brings his lips to Dan’s forehead and murmurs the phrase into his skin again and again and again, so much so that Dan is giggling uncontrollably.  _That_  is a sound Phil hasn’t heard in so long. Dan’s genuine, silly,  _loud_  laugh. Not the manufactured one he produces for the cameras.

When he finally breaks away, Dan sends him one long look before pushing him slowly back down to the sofa and climbing on top of him. Phil’s fingers instinctively curl their way into Dan’s hair and Dan’s mouth finds Phil’s neck, like cogs in a clockwork machine that has been running faultlessly for decades. He allows himself to close his eyes and part his lips in a small breath as Dan murmurs into his neck, but it’s not long before he needs to break away.

“Can we just…” Phil lets out a breathy laugh as he gently tugs on Dan’s hair to urge him to stop. Dan sits up and looks down at him carefully. Phil breaks a small smile when a tiny bit of disappointment flashes across his face.

“What’s wrong?” Dan is breathing heavily now.

 "The sofa…it doesn’t agree with my back, so can we just…“

"Can we move somewhere better?” Dan finishes for him in a whisper. Phil looks between both of his eyes for a moment as he considers the ambiguity and sincerity in Dan’s words, before nodding.

“Somewhere better,” he agrees.

There’s a smile lighting up Dan’s features as he holds out a hand for Phil, and as Phil takes it with a smile that’s surely just as large, he doesn’t need to know  _where_  they’re going from here to know that things are going to get better.

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted to tumblr


End file.
